The Corporate Disclosure Assault

Unions and liberal activists are using proxy rules to attack business political speech.

Updated March 20, 2012 12:01 a.m. ET

Shareholder proxy season is coming up, and along with it a new batch of politicized shareholder resolutions. The underreported story this year is the flowering of a long-planned political campaign intended to stop companies from exercising their free-speech rights to influence government. Corporate directors need to know what they're up against.

The campaign is traveling under the assumed name of "disclosure," which sounds innocuous and is hard for CEOs and corporate boards to oppose. The specific target is to...